Balta1701

Some relevant quotes yesterday about the possibility of changes in Staff in Houston. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/astros/article/Dusty-Baker-James-Click-uncertain-future-Astros-17527456.php

Especially if that was what they were doing, they should be holding this type of event. Let the fans vent, it’s well deserved. Then make sure lots of 8 year old kids meet Colas and Montgomery so that even if the team is struggling maybe people come to a few games to see the guy who they met. Failing to do events like this is a great way to let the fan base die off.

Aren’t those exactly the kind of things you expect a manager to deal with?

If the front office is on a mission to probe that baseball was played correctly in 2005, and all these nerds have done is foul it up - they don’t need exit velocity, they need TWTW - TLR and Ozzie would be ideal candidates. This might also explain why they would hesitate to extend Benetti. And why the last 2 hitting coaches have preached hitting the ball on the ground.

Why should they have to listen to the complaints of the scum beneath them? They’re important.

About the only thing that seems worth while is a couple of the more historically reliable Twitter sources hesitated for a bit and then said “no absolutely not it won’t be Espada” and the NBC Chicago shared immediately that Ozzie was up for an interview next week. There are plenty of ways to read this, but there might be good reason to think Espada is ruled out.

Because as we all know there is no better place for a big corporate retreat than…January in Chicago. How could the hotels not be overbooked to visit that?

Rick Hahn decides he wants to hire him. He leaks that as he asks legal to draw up a contract. He goes to Reinsdorf for approval and Reinsdorf laughs at him and tells him no. Leading candidate to noncandidate in minutes.

It could certainly be that, but it would be extremely disrespectful to do that if a job offer had already been made to someone else. That would be roughly as disrespectful as having a manager's job and quitting on the team with 2 games left in the season as a negotiating tactic.

He has been right before, but has also jumped the gun on things involving the white sox before. Seems like there have been zero other official sources that have said they confirm this supposed leak despite it having been out there for several hours, and there is now an NBC Sports article that says "They will still be interviewing Ozzie next week". My personal assessment is that this is unlikely to be true, although that doesn't mean they don't like him and that doesn't mean they won't actually wind up hiring Espada in a few days, just that they haven't actually put a job offer out there now.

Getting through another winter and baseball being close...for most franchises.

Yeah this is an official source saying they're not nearly done yet. This is them casually shooting down the rumor.

Oh I guarantee the White Sox would have called and asked about him, but big difference between that and saying it's done. Similarly, I am quite confident the White Sox have had an interview with Espada. Is it officially done? Nothing that will change it because contract has ink on it? We'll see.

Please tell me again how great the Rick Hahn era has been.

Please tell me again how great last season was.

If I wanted to view the White Sox as negatively as possible, I'd that on the field they have a team that could compete right now, but that starting as soon as 2024 they could potentially be past their peak and losing pieces they can't replace. They have a weak system and not a lot of room to add players, so there's going to be an enormous amount of pressure on me to win immediately because they might not get a second chance after 2023. On top of that, I'd also be uncertain about the status of the front office, because from an outside perspective it seems like they have to have pressure on them to do something big after completing this rebuild, or else. There's a legitimate scenario where I do everything I can and they're "Joe Girardi-ing" me early in 2024 if the team hasn't met their goals, especially if I'm being hired as a guy outside their "family". Oh, and the organization historically doesn't like paying their managers well, that might be a worry too. The reality is probably somewhere in-between that and your statement. There's an opportunity here, but a lot of work to do to realize it, and there could actually be some pressure on me in this role to make it happen because of the outside situation. If Espada had 2 offers for example, I would bet it would come down to money more than anything else.

How exactly does "Swapping student debt for a house purchase" get stated to not be an investment?

I think this will very much depend on how the season ends. Dusty with a ring could easily make a different decision.

Not enough context in here. Vince Velasquez put up a 4.78 ERA, while that was his best in 4 years it is literally the difference between 4.78 and 4.85 in a year when offense is down. He was worth 0.4 WAR in 2022 and 0.4 WAR in the shortened 2020 season by B-R. Basically they took a guy who was an unreliable starter who has an ERA just below 5, put him in the bullpen, and got an ERA just below 5. Bragging rights! You say “when pitchers go down” as though their training and response have nothing to do with that. Like the day where they sent Kopech out to pitch after he was already hurt during warmups. The pitching coach somehow didn’t notice that his pitcher couldn’t go? Come on. Aaron Bummer specifically, in addition to Giolito, is a guy who has gone significantly backwards since Katz arrived. 1.50 WHIP this year. If he was actually hurt, why was he pitching? With Keuchel…so other people weren’t better, but that isn’t exactly a selling point for this guy? The overall setup is still the same. Getting an ERA of 4.76 out of Velasquez is not a selling point. For the amount of resources put into this pen and this rotation, their performance isn’t in any way exceptional. It could well be acceptable, but “this guy is tolerable” isn’t an argument for why he must be kept at all costs.

I'm not going to actively hate on Katz to nearly the extent of the manager himself, but a handful of names that worked well doesn't necessarily prove what you want it to. In 2021, the White Sox's pitching staff was excellent, in no small part thanks to Rodon. In 2022, the White Sox's pitching staff as a whole was meh - they were 10th in fWAR and that sums them up pretty well. One guy who was really good, a couple of reliable relievers, a couple of starters who overperformed, and a couple of starters who underperformed. But when we look at it a certain way - the White Sox had the 3rd highest bullpen payroll in the league, and were 8th in bullpen fWAR. That's a little disconcerting. They were 11th in salary going to their starters (Lynn, Giolito, Keuchel) but were 15th in terms of fWAR from their starters. That's not particularly good. And if we really want to go for this...this team would have had a below average starting staff if they weren't bailed out by Cueto being available when Lynn got hurt - a normal offseason with no lockout and they would have been genuinely screwed. If I were to take this as harshly as I could, they were a solidly paid pitching staff and an extremely highly paid bullpen that came out mediocre on average, they clearly disappointed and were a part of the underperformance in 2022. 2021 was a strong sales pitch for this pitching coach, 2022 was a clear disappointment particularly in the context of how expensive the staff was. If an incoming manager wants to replace the pitching coach, I'm not going to raise an alarm about it based on 2022. If the manager wants to keep this pitching coach, I will also gladly judge the manager and pitching coach based on how they perform, in a context like this one.

I think you’re probably right that the difference between good and bad strategically is probably a couple of games, but I think there’s an extreme case of that where the difference between bad and awful is bigger than the difference between good and bad. Just as a relevant recent example - how much damage did the Injury List Insanity do to the White Sox last year? This wasn’t just flipping one or two games at the margins, they literally subtracted 1 a full win from Robert by playing him when he needed to be on the IL, based on win probability added. Had they just put him on the IL for 6 weeks, that’s an extra WAR they didn’t lose from the team, and that was just 1 example of it this season.